


Embers

by sevenofspade



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok - Sassafrass
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:35:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin has wrongs to right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reyka_Sivao](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyka_Sivao/gifts).



> This story relies heavily on the events of the song "Hearthfire". You can find a performance [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChnZyaPD880) and the lyrics [here](http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/songs/norse-mythology/hearthfire/).
> 
> I had great fun writing this and I hope you enjoy it.

"Why isn't it working?" Odin asks. He's frustrated and angry and he's been at it for weeks and hasn't made any progress and is almost ready to give up.

"He's expecting Odin Allfather, not Wotan, Jerk Supreme."

"Loki," Odin says. He doesn't need to look to know who the voice belongs to. "What are you doing here?"

"Probably the same thing as you," Loki says, "only better."

"I doubt that," Odin says and turns around to look at him. Loki looks… good and Odin shouldn't feel relieved about that.

Loki shrugs one shoulder and tosses his hair, sending it flying. "You always do and I always prove you wrong."

"Not always," Odin says. They both know what he's talking about.

"Always," Loki says, fire in his eyes. There's the Loki Odin remembers, all fiery temper and grand gestures. He's missed him.

Odin doesn't dignify Loki’s comment with a response. "I've tried being Odin," he says, "and I've tried being Wotan. None of it works."

"What about any of the others?" Loki asks. "Maybe they can help."

"No, Loki," Odin says, "I haven't considered being any of the others."

"Ha! What did I tell you? I'm better at being you than you are," Loki says. His bare feet are leaving smoldering prints on the ashy ground. Still smoldering, after all this time. How you failed your host, then, Allfather.

Loki spins. His eyes are wild and his laugh is free. Odin did that.

"Let's get to work," Loki says. His smile is cruel. Odin did that, too.

"Even if you are Loge," Odin says, "it will not help. He does not listen to us. We are not welcome here, either of us."

"Who said anything about being Loge?" Loki says. He grabs Odin’s hand and his palm is scarred against Odin. The scars fit together perfectly, like pieces of a whole, because they are. "Be Wanderer. You haven't been him in forever."

"Who will you be?" Odin straightens himself, turning his cloak into a coat and calling his hat to his head, broad-brimmed and true.

"I'll be Loki," Loki tells Wanderer. "I always am."

"I’ve always liked that about you," Odin says.

For once, neither of them is lying.

***

Winter, with storm on the way.

A lonely wanderer reaches a house on a hill. "Shelter! The light's nearly done and the wiser man hides when the Thunderer comes."

In truth, Odin has no fear of Thor. Fathers are not meant to fear their sons. Brothers are not meant to fear brothers either. Today, he is not Odin, but Wanderer and Thor is no son of his. He's trapped as well - willingly, perhaps, but trapped still - in one man's memory of days long past. In his own mind, any man is king and this man has reason enough to want Odin and Wanderer dead.

Perhaps it is just as well that Loki is here.

Or perhaps not.

The inside of the house is not as he remembers it. Its hall is grander, fit for a king of gods, its feast more odorant, fit for the winter at the end of all things, its fire warmer, ripped straight from Jotunheim. That last one, at least, is owed to more than the golden glow of memory.

In the depth of the fire's prison of cunning and stone, Loki grins at him. It has ceased long ago to be a welcome sight, but it warms Odin's heart so to see his bloodbrother's spirit alive in the flame.

Wanderer is welcomed as his host's guest and partakes of the feast.

Loki is silent.

This does not bode well. Loki is rarely silent, even with mischief on his mind.

The host's son has something of Baldr about him, in the way he moves, in the brightness in his eyes, in the colour of his dark brown hair. It breaks Wanderer's heart all over again to see this and know what happens - what happen _ed_ \- to both of them.

So Wanderer turns to his host for the last round of riddles.

And now Wanderer can hear Loki whispering in the hearth, urging it to burn down to embers its prison of caution and stone. It'd be foolish of him not to take it personally, when it is meant as such.

Loki was not there when first this house burned down.

Loki was not there when the host first lost his family.

Loki was not there when he lost his son.

Fire burns, it's its nature. What you do with it and how you deal with that is all up to you.

The worlds will burn and it is no more Loki's fault than it is Odin's. It is all their fault and it has always been their fault.

The worlds will burn as their friendship did and they will have no one to blame but themselves.

"Hey!" Loki is snapping his fingers in Odin's face. "Hey, old man, are you still with us?"

"Yes," Odin says.

Loki is burning, flames rippling below his skin, hair red like the end of the world. "Shame."

"Father, I can't understand why you let him live on," the host starts. "He murdered my son and he murdered yours too."

"Excuse me?" Loki says, extra emphasis on the first syllabe and flailing, limbs flying. "Fehu, you can't prove I had anything to do with that, uruz, what gives you the right? Baldr was my friend too. And thurisaz..."

"Loki," Odin says, not letting him finish, "just this once, keep your tongue."

Loki snorts. "It's never just this once with you and always with the orders."

"Please, old friend," Odin says and that shocks Loki into silence.

The host continues, seemingly unaware of their exchange. "No force can extinguish this evil but you!"

Loki opens his mouth and Odin holds up a hand. Loki rolls his eyes, but does not speak.

"When you lived through this night," Odin says, "you only did so thanks to the hearthfire."

"Oh," Loki says and grabs at Odin, pulling him back and throwing him as far as he can be thrown. Loki is a lot stronger than he looks and Odin is lighter than he used to be, so that's pretty far.

Loki flashes over to Odin's side. "I must be buying into your wise man bullshit, because it didn't occur to me that you wouldn't know that -"

"I never lived through that night," the host screeches and it is no host.

"A ghost," Loki says, "a fucking ghost and you never even noticed? What's wrong with you?"

Grief. Grief is what's wrong with him. Grief for all he's lost and all he's yet to lose.

Odin snatches Loki's arm and tugs him closer. 

Now, they're back in the waking world.

Or perhaps not.

"Enough with the hugging," Loki says, but makes no move to get away from Odin.

"I thought," Odin starts. He lets Loki go.

Loki spins, hair whipping through the air. "There's your problem, right there."

"Our problem," Odin corrects. He means this both ways.

Loki smiles, crooked and scarred.

"Enough!" The ghost roars and distorts until it resembles nothing like a human being. "You will pay for what you did!"

"I could leave," Loki says. "Let you die here and save myself the trouble of Ragnarok."

"No," Odin says, "you couldn't." They are blood-brothers and that ties their fates together, until the whole nine realms end.

Loki flips a hand in the air. "You're my brother, of course I wouldn't. But I could."

Odin knows his brother enough to know that while it is phrased as a threat, it is a promise. Bloodbrotherhood is a promise that neither of you will go alone into the night and that when your friendship ends so will everything else.

It is perhaps not meant to be taken quite as literally as Loki and Odin have taken it.

"You will pay for what you did!" The ghost's voice is a sharp screech. "You will both pay for what you did!"

"What I have given, I can take away," the Allfather says and the ghost crumbles into dust.

"Now, you play the Allfather card," Loki says. "Figures we'd go through all this trouble for nothing. You could just have started with that and saved us all time."

"Loki," Odin says, "what are you doing here?"

"Being grateful I'm not human right now, because wow, fucked up much?" Loki bends and picks up a skull, jaw still attached. He works the jaw, making the skull into a mouthpiece. His voice is pitched through his nose and the sound of it is unpleasant. Odin has always hated when Loki did this. "Hi, I'm a human! I worship Odin! I hope he's not mean like his brother Loki! Oh no! He is mean like Loki! And now I am unmade, because I had legitimate grievances he didn't want to listen to!" Towards the end, Loki's voice grows back into his own, bitter and sober.

"Yes," Loki says, "I am glad I am not human and do not have to fear unmaking by the Allfather."

Fire dances around Loki's feet, flames bathing his bony ankles in golden light.

"Loki," Odin says again, "why are you here?"

The fire leaps up to nestle into Loki's hand, a tiny ball of painful heat, even from where Odin is standing. "Why do you think?"

"Because I am here," Odin says. That why Loki has always done everything. Because Odin asked him too, or asked him not too.

Odin never did love his brother as much as his brother loved him.

"Flattering ourselves, are we? Not everything is about you." Loki's mouth is twisted in not quite a snarl.

"So you just happened to be on a lovely midnight stroll through Midgard, is that it?" Odin dismisses his hat.

"Am I not allowed? You're not the boss of me anymore," Loki says.

"I never was," Odin says.

Loki laughs, crackling like arsonfire eating through branches. "No? Then what about 'build me a wall, Loki', 'fetch me Idunn, Loki', 'go there, Loki, do that'? Aren't those the words of a king to his subject? I don't know why I put with you for so long. I must be even softer in the head than I thought I was."

"I was just asking you to help," Odin says. It sounds weak, even to his own ears. "That's what family does."

"Are we family, then?" Loki is not looking at Odin. It is perhaps just as well.

"I did not think you needed to be told," Odin says.

"And I find it telling," Loki says, "that they call you Allfather and not Goodfather." The globe of fire in his hand thrums, beating like a tiny heart.

"Again," Odin says, "why -"

"Am I here?" Loki finishes for him. Odin's missed that, having someone else finish his thoughts for him.

"Why not?" Loki says. It's as true as anything Loki ever said. "And I did wonder why you were spending weeks in Midgard with Ragnarok looming over us so."

"And what did you find?" Odin's coat shrinks back into a cloak.

"That my brother is a fool," Loki says, "but then, that's hardly new, is it? All my brothers are fools."

"All your brothers are dead," Odin says. He includes himself in that number, because Ragnarok is coming and neither of them will walk out of it alive. "Was that really why you are here?"

"Of course," Loki says. "Have I ever lied to you?"

Odin smiles, at that. They both know the answer to that question, so there is no point in voicing it. He grabs Loki by the arm. Loki stills. His skin is hot under Odin's palm. "I'll miss you, brother mine."

Loki's eyes widen, white around yellow, orange, red and pinpricks of black. There's a slight bue-ish tinge to the white, like forgefire or the blue of Odin's eye. They shared more than blood, on that day long ago.

"We'll see each other soon," Loki says. His voice is sad.

"I meant after." They'll kill each other, even if they will not strike the blows themselves.

Odin lets Loki go.

Loki flickers out, then briefly back into existence, like a wink.


End file.
